Peace with the barrel of a gun pointed down at you isn't all that appealing to me.

True, but we're talking about acceptable ending in a story-line sense, not palatable in a moral sense.I watched by wife finish the EC yesterday evening, and all four propositions were intrinsicly flawed in their own uniques ways, and the decision was hard to make.

The good thing was, unline the original where none of them were even worthy of consideration, all three were handled so that you considered them on their own footing, not because "Starchild said so". Also, the increased interaction made the Starchild makes him look all the more flawed, and it was GOOD - you realise you are looking at the "face" of the Reaper, which has a reasonable, if flawed argument to make. He knows his option is flawed, and he knows he's beaten, so he tries to help you make sense of what comes next, because he was born to solve the same problem you are facing.

For the same reason you stated, I was completely against Control - One does not protect the Many. One's biais will always color its decision, and is tantamount to tyranny, even if it is benevolent.In the end, we chose Destroy. It's harsh on the Geth and EDI, but, like it was stated, Synthesis cannot be forced, and throwing a giant DNA-altering pulse "because Shep is stronger than the Reapers" is as forced as you can get. War is the expression of conflicting thoughts, but so is debate. Even if it is less violent, it is not better to force a solution down everyone's throats. Conflict must sadly continue, hopefully in a more metaphorical, debate-kind of way, until Synthesis comes on its own.

Starchild lost and eventually rejected the hope of synthetics and organics to live peacefully, and that's his weakness here. He and the Reapers should be flushed out, as they are the very symbol of this constant war. From there, hopefully, the next generation will welcome its own creations not as slaves, but as children worthy of their own lives, that will some day help us just as we helped them be.

When that day comes, seek all the light and wonder of this world, and fight.

Peace with the barrel of a gun pointed down at you isn't all that appealing to me.

Is there any other kind of peace in Mass Effect universe?

Throughout the entire trilogy, Shepard puts an end to many vicious, stupid conflicts either by pointing a gun at people (Renegade) or by reminding them that there's a Reaper-sized gun pointed at them (Paragon).

(Or maybe I'm just biased because God Emperor of Dune is still one of my favorite books ever)

My renegade, ruthless but ultimately (mostly) 'good guy' femshep choose Destroy as the only viable option for her, her job was to stop the reapers, if sacrifices had to be made, terrible, painful sacrifices... so be it, she was willing to bear the burden and make the call knowing it almost certainly meant the death of herself and her friends, let alone the Geth who trusted her.

My paragon, 'save ALL the people!' shep I still can't decide what to pick >.<

"Definition: Love is making a connection with another person against long odds." "Clarification: Love is making a shot to the knees of a target 300 kilometers away using an Aratech sniper rifle with a tri-light scope."-HK-47WoW Millionaire

We knew about the differences in EMS for Destroy, and I guess the EC reflects that to a point (I noted SC mentionning the "Crucible is mostly intact and damage should be minimal"), but didn't know about multiple versions of Control.

Brb youtube :-p

When that day comes, seek all the light and wonder of this world, and fight.

Of the endings proposed, i liked Refusal the most, before i saw it.I mean: As a diehard sci-fi fan, the Reapers are completely right. Perhaps the cutoff is too arbitrary, or whatever: But facts stand, they are right.Humanity will have to be wiped out? Small price, compared to the mere possibility of a galactic-scale annihilation of organic life.All it takes is ONE SINGLE EVENT of synthetics overpowering organics, in any cycle, and we're on a highway to the annihilation of the galaxy, organic matter be damned.Think about it. It's not about mere 50'000 years. It's about the life cycle of a galaxy: Billions of years. The reaper solution made sense.Synthesis, albeit likeable, is beyond the amount of bullshit i'm willing to take. It makes NO SENSE, on any plane. And Mass-Effect, while no hard sci-fi, made always a point of explaiing why things work that way. Synthesis takes that concept, eats it, and vomits it in a nova.Control would probably end in Shepard suiciding after a limited amount of time, in respect of free will.Destroy, well, that's no solution to the grand problem.

These two lead to a high probability of annihilation. I may not be willing to risk the galaxy's fate on humanity's survival.

Yes, all things considered, i wanted the Reapers to win. Perhaps modify them, to annihilate only savant AIs and the races that made them.Yes, this will mean no post-scarcity society and everythin'. But at least, there will be life in the galaxy. For as long as possible.

Too bad that refusal is bullshit: The reapers don't win, since the next cycle defeats them easily.

This is a character-centric series. AND those asshats STILL failed to give us as much as a nod to what happens to the PLAYABLE CHARACTERS after the end.I could pardon grand-scale considerations, for that they are an obsession of mine: but saint god, even in text-form, a post-end on what the characters are doing was needed.NEEDED.

Oh, and for "lolplotholes" they "solved":We complained about how the playable chars down on Earth with you magically were on the normandy.So what we get? At 100m from the Beam, which is being bombarded from the Reapers, one of the two gets wounded, and Shepard calls the Normandy.This is beyond ridicolous. First, the fate of galaxy is at stake in the events of the next twenty seconds, and YOU FREAKING STOP RUNNING BECAUSE YOUR COMPANY IS WOUNDED?Shepard wouldn't have done that. Neither Renegade nor paragon.And saint god if Garrus and Kaidan would've permitted that. I'd rather say they would've tried and died.Surely they wouldn't have called down the normandy (which magically gets there in ten seconds flat, from orbit), and sure as hell they wouldn't have exposed it to direct Reaper fire (which magically ignore the bigass spaceship there: If it was so easy getting air support, why didn't the normandy go near the beam, drop the squad with jetpacks/speedboostinganything, and call it a day, getting the whole Shepard crew inside the beam?)It's like they didn't think this through at all.I appreciated the changes before the Beam pops up, though. the new Hackett Rousing Speech is amazing.

Aubade wrote:I'm gonna go through this thread tomorrow and edit your posts to be invisible so you have to highlight to read.

I haven't gotten a chance to play the endings yet, and some of this seems pretty spoilery.

If you guys could please just keep in mind not everyone has had the chance to play it, that would be nice =]

Not screaming and stomping, just lettin' ya know.

Or just dont go into the topic untill you have?Also, how do you plan on moderating the topic without getting stuff spoiled?I still havnt done it myself, but this is the first time Ive looked in this topic cause I know I cant read and comment on to much here anyway unless I finish it.Short spoilers wont ruin the experience anyway, sure you might know a detail or two you wernt really suppose to, but even then I can still find a lot of excitement finding out how it comes to that conclusion.